Climate Change Coverage in Indian Print Media: A Discourse Analysis

• Published in: The international journal of climate change. Impacts and responses Vol. 3; no. 2; pp. 219 - 232
• Main Author: Mittal, Radhika
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge Common Ground Research Networks 2012
• Subjects: Accountability; Climate change; Content analysis; Cross cultural studies; Discourse analysis; Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; Mass media; Media coverage; News; Quantitative analysis; Risk communication; Social progress; India
• ISSN: 1835-7156
• DOI: 10.18848/1835-7156/CGP/v03i02/37105

Climate change has attracted much political and media attention in recent years. While western media coverage of this issue has been well-documented, there is a paucity of media analysis for climate change coverage in developing economies. This paper examines the media discourse generated in India among three leading English-language dailies (with centrist and conservative news values) during globally prominent climate change events. A quantitative analysis shows a peak in coverage when the Fourth Assessment Report by the IPCC was released in February 2007, and when climate change crusaders won the Nobel Peace Prize in October 2007. A qualitative content analysis reveals that frames such as scientific certainty, energy challenge, social progress, public accountability and looming disaster are widely employed by the elite Indian press to raise relevant social, economic and political issues. Cross-cultural comparisons of media constructs, especially with Europe and America, help identify the further development of risk communication in this field. In a broader, global sense, this work can be tied in to the idea of the ‘climatic turn’ as suggested by European researchers with climate change evolving into a grand, transnational narrative.